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Hard work pays off in spot on U.S. team for winger
By Zack Van Eyck
Deseret News Olympic specialist
Andrea Kilbourne didn't exactly come from out of nowhere. She came from around the corner.
The 21-year-old Kilbourne, a right winger on the U.S. women's ice hockey team, is from Saranac Lake, N.Y., a neighboring town to Lake Placid, N.Y., where the national team holds its tryouts every summer.
Lake Placid may be a short drive, but making it all the way to Utah and the 2002 Winter Games was a long haul. Kilbourne attended four tryout camps for the national team, 1998-2001, before finally making the squad last August.
Then, on the 31-game Skate to Salt Lake tour, Kilbourne survived two roster cuts that saw the team trimmed from 25 players to 20 for the Olympics.
Perhaps it's no wonder, then, that Kilbourne said she felt more like a spectator than an Olympian when she entered Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremonies.
"Walking out, I felt like an Olympian," she said. "I've always dreamed about this moment since I was a little kid."
But Kilbourne did more than just dream. She worked. Hard. After failing in her third attempt to make the national team in August 2000, Kilbourne decided to devote the next spring and summer to preparing for the 2001 camp.
"I didn't work, I didn't do anything except train. I had to set my sights on August," said Kilbourne, who will return to Princeton University for her senior season next winter. "Actually, since halfway through our (college) season last year, all I've been doing is getting ready for this. "
Kilbourne's training regimen gave her increased confidence heading into the 10-day tryout camp.
"I was definitely more optimistic this time," she said. "I felt a lot better physically. I felt a lot better mentally, a lot more prepared, and I was just glad that if I didn't make the team I wouldn't have any regrets."
Kilbourne was one of several younger players U.S. Coach Ben Smith selected ahead of older players with Olympic and national team experience.
"I really came in with some fire in my eyes," she said. "I was determined to make the team and I was skating real well and I think he saw that."
Growing up in the shadow of the Miracle on Ice didn't hurt Kilbourne's resolve.
"Our town is such a small and supportive community," she said. "I never questioned myself as an athlete. A lot of people go through that, they have people look down on them and say, 'Hockey? You should be figure skating.' But in my town, I never got any of that."
Kilbourne is one of only three players on the U.S. Olympic team who was not also a member of the 2000-2001 national team, which spent all of last season living and training together in Lake Placid. Courtney Kennedy, a 22-year-old defenseman from Woburn, Mass., also made the team after attending the summer tryouts four times. Defenseman Lyndsay Wall, the youngest player on Team USA at 16, is the other newcomer.
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